Okay, I have 2 new galleries up. About 3 nights of work here. Originally I wanted to post like…10 galleries! but frig, it’s time consuming. I did these 2 but I need to take a break. I should do a gallery every once in a while instead of all at once…even doing 2 galleries was pretty painful.

Step 1: Set up the “studio”.

Step 2: Take pictures. Go wild, take as many angles and shots as you want.

Step 3: Select the ones you want to show.

Step 4: In Photoshop, adjust levels to lighten the background. I attempt to make it white, to blend in with pure white. Doing so, you lose color information, darkened colors, etc. It kind of sucks, losing the information…but I sacrifice it for a more intense image. The colors can become more vivid as well.

Step 5: With the Brush tool, go over the corners to make everything white. Also, use the clone tool to fix blemishes.

Step 6: Resize for the web and post.

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Step 4 and 5 take the most time. The 32 shots for my recent Black Widow gallery took about….4-5 hours. It was painful. I should take fewer shots but it’s just so fun to try different angles, etc.

Anyways, here are thumbnails to my 2 most recent galleries. They can, of course, also be found at Gallery.

Kotobukiya Bishoujo Statue: Black Widow

Kotobukiya Bishoujo Statue: Rogue

I was planning to release a whole mess of galleries in the next couple of days…but doing one of my galleries has involved a lot of lightening in Photoshop (Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast). It was then that I realized my photos aren’t quite getting the bright light I’d like…

I messed around with my lightbox and bristol board just now…I’m not sure if I want to re-take my shots. I don’t mind, photography is pretty fun….tho it’s time consuming and I have better things to do.

Anyways…hopefully by the end of the weekend, I should have a bunch of galleries up!
I’ve got a whole mess of toys…I’ve already got a whole mess of photos but if they’re too dark, I’ll need to reshoot…

/update on what’s been occupying my nights lately

Figure A is a cake, the picture is taken on my kitchen counter, using natural condo light.
Figure B is the same cake, placed in my lightbox, using…light from the lightbox.

The camera is the same, the photographer is the same…the only difference is whether the cake was placed in the lightbox or not. You can see the difference in quality, professionalism…color…um…and whatever other buzz words photographers use. Texturizationalation. Y’know?

More pics coming soon…the lightbox is certainly fun to play with. I’m very happy I purchased it…it was like trying to draw with crayons. You could get some things right..but you couldn’t get the detail or the look you wanted. Even if your skill was the same, without the right tools, you couldn’t do what you’re capable of.

Originally, even with the lightbox, I couldn’t get the pictures I wanted. I read the camera manual a bit this weekend to learn the settings more, I Googled some hints on taking professional pictures with a digital camera…and I’ve improved my skills with pretty minimal effort. I’m very excited to show some better pictures…I still have quite a few models to take images of. And I hope to get at least 2 more from Anime North :)